Sunday, December 06, 2009

Australia's voters a bunch of dummies?

Last week, Malcolm Turnbull became the first right-wing leader to be deposed for the ideological crime of taking global warming seriously. Turnbull was a confident politician, from a party that had dominated Australian politics until Labor's victory in 2007. He thought he was at the centre of the English-speaking world's conservative consensus. He dutifully committed his Liberal party to go along with Labor's plans to use a cap-and-trade scheme to cut emissions. His party's members went wild.

A right-leaning Australian journalist told me that, for conservatives there, "climate change is now morphing from a science issue into yet another front line in the culture wars, in which any obsession of the inner-city, mung-bean-flavoured-tofu-eating, latte-slurping political/academic/media class is automatically the target of resentment and scorn".

Tony Abbott, a reactionary Catholic, saw his chance, added opposition to green taxes to the old agenda of opposing gay marriage and abortion, and replaced Turnbull as leader.

Yes, Abbott is Catholic but I can't recall him recently saying anything about gay marriage or abortion. And if Abbott has hijacked the party, how to account for the Liberals' by-election victories over the weekend? Obvioulsy Australia's voters are a bunch of dummies who can be manipulated at will.

1 Comments:

A lesson from the US is conservative politicians perform well in elections when campaigning with conservative values, if they stand up and say what they believe in and what policies they will enact that tie in with their values, they tend to be rewarded at the ballot box.

The problem with being left of centre is Labor voters will vote labor and conservative voters will ignore you as well. If you are going to vote for a left wing party you may as well vote for the real thing.